Low turnout spurs debate about moving schoolboard elections

The lawyer in charge of policing campaigns in Iowa and the state’s top election official both say it may be time to merge school board elections with municipal balloting. Charlie Smithson, the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board’s executive director and legal counsel, says it makes sense to vote on school board candidates in November when folks are voting for mayoral, city council and county supervisor positions. “I think it’s time when you look at the amount of resources that are spent by not only the election officials but by the campaign board in resolving complaints involved with school board election, and then you look at the turn-out statewide (for school board elections) is nine percent, we’re spending an awful lot of money for not very many voters seeming to care,” Smithson says. About one-and-a-half million dollars was spent statewide on this past Tuesday’s school board elections. “It might be time to consolidate some of these elections so at least we’re getting higher turn-out and more bang for our buck, so to speak, for the Iowa taxpayers,” Smithson says. Secretary of State Chet Culver, the state’s commissioner of elections, favors the idea of consolidating elections.“I’m for really looking at ways to increase (voter) turn-out and save money,” Culver says. Culver has tried to get legislators to pass a bill that would merge school board elections with city and county elections, without success.He says the Iowa Association of School Boards and the state teachers’ union have opposed the idea of ending the practice of holding separate school board elections in September. Culver says he’ll continue to press to move school board elections to November when city and county elections are held. “It’s a common sense approach to increasing turn-out and saving money,” Culver says.